Lucy Review: Pretentious Anti-thriller

Lucy commits to its own bullshit and never looks back, using a different approach to exposition. The pseudoscience isn’t exactly dumped in one conversation and explained through narration. So the movie is free to toy with the idea while making an interesting set-up.

As always, when something important needs to be said Morgan Freeman gets a paycheck gig. Scarlett Johansson is more than capable to pull off this role.

Everything else in the film doesn’t hold up well.

It’s able to put its borrowed ideas from Limitless, Space Odyssey, the Matrix, and Akira to good use but doesn’t explore its own concepts – time and cellular immortality. Instead, it features ideas we’ve already been told – superhuman powers and genetic manipulation.

Lucy spends more time talking about her powers than making good use of it for inventive action scenes. There is no suspense and sense of danger because she’s invisible. It doesn’t help that the villains are stereotypical Asian villains. 

The heroine is a one-dimensional hard-partying girl so there’s nothing much at stake here. The movie attempts to say something about the untapped power of our brains, but Lucy is hinged on a debunked theory and worse, does little with it. 

Lucy is a moderately charismatic – mainly because of ScarJo’s looks – dumbest movie made about brain capacity.